Contents

Real software systems continuously evolve over time. Statically‐typed programming languages, however, provide few mechanisms to enable software evolution. In this course we will explore mechanisms and techniques provided by dynamic programming languages, in particular Smalltalk, which facilitate both run‐time change, and long‐term evolution. We will also explore techniques used to analyze static models of software as well as running systems to support program comprehension, refactoring and reengineering. The course is based partly on two open‐source textbooks: Pharo by Example, and Object-Oriented Reengineering Patterns.

Learning Outcomes

After the successful completion of this course, you will:

Understand how to use meta-programming to design highly adaptive software systems

Be able to use state-of-the art static analysis to automatically uncover problems in software

Deploy dynamic analysis to examine and optimize existing source code

Be familiar with state-of-the-art technologies for reverse- and reengineering

Data-mine large repositories of software to build better programmer tools